Simple Things: 1 John 5:11 - 12

Simple Things

1 John 5:11-12

            So think about three things: one is chaos, one is lonliness, and the other is fear. These are three things that you and I, in our culture and in our life, face all the time. Chaos, lonliness, and fear. Me, as somebody who, I have a beautiful wife, I have two lovely kids, I have a home, I get three meals a day (I’m pretty sure), I have two cars that work most of the time, I have wonderful friends and a beautiful community to be part of and a job that I really love even though sometimes it’s hard and you guys are frustrating. But in all of that, I still taste the chaos of life. I still am impacted by lonliness. And I still face fear. And you can’t run away from it. Last week I talked about this tide of evil – that we all kind of are holding our breath under – that came out of the Garden. And some of those waves that we experience are chaos, lonliness, and fear. Now, if you say, “No, I don’t experience those”, then you’re in a fourth wave, and that’s denial. But tonight we’re starting a series, up to Lent, called Simplicity, or Simple Things, and what we are going to talk about are just some simple verses that we think are really core to following Jesus, and really core to maybe being part of the Village. And so tonight we’re going to talk about 1 John 5:11-12.

            Now, John was a disciple of Jesus, and John was ostentatious enough to say in his gospel, his story about Jesus, that he was the disciple that Jesus loved; that’s how he identified himself. John writes in the New Testament and he writes three letters. He named them creatively: 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John, and he wrote a gospel called the gospel of John. I don’t think he had any part in giving titles to them, because that wasn’t part of the thing. But we titled them very creatively. He wrote these. And in his first letter, in 1 John 5, he basically summarizes everything he says in the gospels and everything he says in his letters. And it’s: “This is the testimony that God has given us eternal life and this life is in his son. Whoever has the son has life and whoever does not have the son does not have life.” This echoes one of the major themes of Scripture, and that is that life can only come through Jesus. But John starts with this word: “testimony”. That this is “the testimony”. Some translations say, “record”. But this is a testimony. To have a testimony, or a record of something, you’re proclaiming something. And the proclamation that he’s making is that eternal life is in Jesus. That God has given us eternal life. But to have that kind of testimony, you have to come from somewhere. You have to have an experience of something. And so, let me read to you a little bit out of 1 John 1, as to what John’s testimony actually is out of which he’s making this proclamation that God has given us eternal life. So chapter one of John says this: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched.” Now I just want you to catch that theme there. John is saying, “the thing that we have seen and the thing that we have heard.” Well if you remember back two sermons to Advent, in Advent we talked about how this angel shows up to the shepherds, and then the thing that they’re proclaiming to everybody, and the thing that they’re talking about to each other is the things that they have seen and the things that they have heard. And then we jumped forward last week and we looked at Acts 3, and we looked at John and Peter, after Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, and they are in front of the Jewish rulers, who are saying, “You’ve got to stop teaching about Jesus’s healing and Jesus’s name.” And they’re like, “Well, if you’re telling us that we have to stop talking about what we’ve seen and what we’ve heard, then good luck. Because we’re not going to stop talking about what we’ve seen and what we’ve heard.” And John, in 1 John, adds something: “Something we’ve touched.” “We actually wrestled with the Word. We saw the Word. We heard the Word.”

            There’s this relationship. So when John is saying, “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life”, he’s saying, “I saw eternal life, I heard eternal life, I touched eternal life.” And then he continues and says, “This we proclaim concerning the Word of life: the life appeared, we have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ, we write this to make our joy complete.” So, John says that he wants to tell you that there are two reasons he has this testimony that God has given you eternal life (that it’s yours). One of these is reasons is so that you can have fellowship with him. With John. So you can have fellowship with John. Now, when he’s saying that, he’s not saying that he wants to hang out with you and with his first century contemporaries at McDonald’s. That’s not what he’s talking about when he says fellowship. And for you foodies, he’s not talking about Zinburger or any kind of high-falooting place like Harvest, or any other places that you might go to if you’re a person who loves food. He’s not talking about sitting around, hanging out, and having fun. And if you’re a kid, In-and-Out Burger. When John says fellowship, what he’s talking about is communion. He’s talking about the eating of God’s body and the drinking of his blood. The thing that connects us to life. So he’s saying: “What I want is for you to be able to come, together with me, and be in fellowship with Jesus. I want us to be in community together, with Jesus”. And then he says: “Because I want my joy to be made complete.” Now, Gareth is sitting here. Gareth makes amazing sweet rolls. Now I know Gareth well enough to know that when he makes sweet rolls, there’s a reason that he gives them away to his friends. Number one is that he wants us all to be fatter than him so that he can feel good about himself. No that’s not trueJ. Number two is that his joy is made complete when he sees you eat, or hears about you eating his sweet roll, and you just melt, as the calories and the sugar and the butter…right? His joy is made complete when you taste the thing that he tastes. The thing that he enjoys. So when John is saying, “This is the testimony, that God has given us eternal life”, what he’s saying is, “I want you to be with me in this eternal life, and the way that I have touched it, seen it, and heard it, I want you to touch it, see it, and hear it. I want to see that on your face. I want to hear the stories of your experience of Jesus.”

            Now, in the gospel of John, John 4:6, Jesus says something really interesting. He says, “I am the way, the truth and the life. And nobody gets to the Father except through me.” By me. I’m it. Now, most of us, if you’ve grown up in the church, maybe you’ve thought, “Wow, that’s a great statement by Jesus”. Most of us think, when someone asks, “What’s true?”, you say, “Well Jesus says he’s the truth.” Well here’s the cool thing about that that I haven’t told you in awhile and it’s that, in the Old Testament, we have the Law and the Prophets. And a Jewish person would call that, in general, their Torah. But the Law and the Prophets, for a Jewish person, was called The Way, The Truth, and The Life. And so a Jewish person would say, the way to God is through the Law and the Prophets. The way to truth is through the Law and the Prophets. The way to life is through the Law and the Prophets. But Jesus said, “No, no, no, it’s not the Law and the Prophets, it’s me. The Law and the Prophets just point to me. I’m the way, I’m the truth, I’m the life.”

            Now, John says, “This is my testimony, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” But at the end of the gospel of John, John says that the reason he’s telling this whole story, and if you read the first letter of John you will find this out, is because he wants you to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. But there are some problems with belief, right? You can’t just “believe” something (what does that mean?). If you’re going to take hold of this proclamation and say, “This is my testimony. That God has given you eternal life and this life is in his Son, and he who has the Son has life and he who does not have the Son does not have life” – if that’s going to be my testimony, if that’s what I’m going to proclaim, then what does that actually look like? How does that actually happen? Well John, in 1 John 5:1, kind of lays that out for us. It says this: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God”. Okay, so everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. So the first thing that you have to believe, the first thing that you have to assent to is that Jesus is the Christ, and is born of God. So part of following God, part of having the testimony that eternal life comes from God – to be able to proclaim that – you have to be able to say, “Okay, well Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the King. He’s the Son of God.” You have to be able to just say it.

            But to say something doesn’t really mean anything, right? You have to have some kind of action that goes underneath that. Something that shows that it’s true. It says, “And everyone who loves the Father, loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God. By loving God, and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands and his commands are not burdensome.” The other day, somehow my son said something about “How do you know that I love you?”, and I said, “When you obey!” Right? What does God say, what does John say is involved in believing? Involved in eternal life? Loving God and his people, loving Jesus and his people, and obeying. So we have a statement: “I believe that Jesus is God and that he was born of God”, which for an ancient person is just saying that Jesus is God. And now I’m willing to act on that. But, you know what, acting on that without any kind of motivation doesn’t go very well. After awhile, belief and acting on belief, without any motivation, doesn’t do anything. And so, it says, “For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” So, part of believing is making the statement. Part of believing is obeying and loving. But the reason that you would do that is that there is this hope that you would overcome the world.

            Now, last week I told some people I was going to go see Rogue One. And everybody said, “Oh, well it’s going to end up in your sermon.” And I was thinking, 1 John 5:11-12 – Star Wars – I don’t think that’s going to work. ….Oh, it does. And for the people who said it was going to be in my sermon, here you go. There is this scene with this monk, and he’s blind, and the monk has this mantra that is, “The force is one with me and I am one with the force”, and he repeats it when he’s nervous. Or something along those lines. Now there’s this scene at the end of the movie, where this guy and a few of the rebels are pinned down, and they need to get from one place to the next to flip this switch. So the monk stands up as the laser bolts are flying around and he holds his little staff and he’s blind and he begins to walk into the battle field, saying, “I am one with the force and the force is one with me. I am one with the force and the force is one with me,” and he just walks straight through the battle field. As things are flying at him, and he makes it across, and I’ll leave it there. But it’s a pretty compelling scene. And as I think about 1 John 5:11-12, these two verses are very similar to the mantra of this monk. Because as you and I face chaos, lonliness, and fear, the thing that we’ve been given in belief and obedience and love and hope of overcoming, the way that we actually practice that is to stand up, grab our little staff and say, “This is the testimony, that God has given to us eternal life and this life is in the Son. And he who has the Son has life, and he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. And this is the testamony….”

            Now here’s what happens when you begin to embrace eternal life. Because, when you’re embracing eternal life, when you’re willing to make the proclamation that Jesus is the Son of God, when you make that proclamation and when you begin to love his people and love him, and embrace the hope that he will overcome, you begin to face chaos. And the thing that you face chaos with is truth. Because there are lots of virtuous people in the world who don’t know Jesus. You do not need Jesus to have virtue. You do not need Jesus to be good. But you need Jesus to have a reason to be good that’s not selfish. That’s not about you. You need a construct that’s moral to ground you. And the thing that’s different about Christianity is that Christianity comes along, and the God of the Universe says, “I am the anchor. I am the Way. The Truth. And the Life. I will give you a boundary. I will put a way.” Now I don’t know how many of you follow history, or like to read about World War II, but when the war ended and the Nazis were on trial, and most of the western world was saying, “How could you do these things?” And the people would say, “Well, but we were just operating according to the rules of our country.” And if you go into the courtroom at Nuremberg, you will see, on one side of that courtroom, there is Adam and Eve and the Serpent, and on the other is the Ten Commandments. And eventually the appeal is, “Well isn’t there a higher law? Isn’t there something beyond your virtually-constructed truth?” Well, in Christianity, eternal life is to say, “You know what’s going to anchor you in the chaos? The thing that’s going to keep you bobbing straight, and not caught off guard and terrified in the chaos of evil? Is Jesus. The way, the truth, and the life”.

            Now, the second thing that we face is lonliness. And you would think that maybe this doesn’t connect, but it does. The thing that eternal life offers us, in the face of lonliness, is justice. When you are saying, “This is the testamony that God has given us: eternal life and this life is in his Son and he who has the Son has life,” what you are saying is that there is a justice. Let me explain this. Justice is the highest virtue. Because without justice, you can’t have friendship. Without justice, you are lonely. Think about it: all of our relationships are built on wrongs. You can love me, you can care about me, you can be so nice to me for years, and you do one thing to me, and you will never fix it. Ever. I will hate you for it. Oh, I’ll be nice to you. I’ll be kind. I’ll pretend that everything’s okay. But there is a wound and it will always be there. Because we cry out for justice; it’s in our pores, it’s the thing that makes life right. Now, 5,000 years ago, the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Abraham, climbed up a mountain with his son. And his son was named Isaac, and according to Abraham, he thought that God had asked him to sacrifice him (which I believe he did). So they went up the hill and Abraham got ready to kill Isaac, and all of the sudden, God says, “No. Wait.” And he provides a different sacrifice. And any historian worth his salt (if you took your humanities 101 class you would have found out) that the moment that God stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son was the moment we can trace in history when human sacrifice began to slow down and stop. That is when human sacrifice began to stop being one of the primary ways of worshipping God. That’s not that it didn’t continue, but it changed in that moment. When God stepped in and said, “Wait. There’s another way.”

            Now, 2,000 years ago, Jesus climbed up a hill, and was killed. And justice was meted out for him so that, when I am super nice to you for a couple years, and then I do something stupid and hurt you, that justice is actually paid, by Jesus. That you and I can actually be friends, because now, in eternal life, we can taste justice. And do you know how we taste justice? Through Jesus. Jesus, who stepped in between our marriages, our friendships, our stupidity, our arrogance, and provides justice for us. So that we can eat the bread, drink the wine, and be in fellowship together. And actually taste goodness. So the way that we stand in the way of lonliness is through justice. That’s what eternal life offers.

            Last, is love. And really, we could say, grace, love, belonging. But really what eternal life offers, when it speaks out against fear, is it really speaks about belonging. Because when you belong somewhere, and to someone, you are loved in spite of yourself. Not because of who you are. Because you belong. That’s what grace is: it’s belonging. It’s actually why we have a belonging service every year. We have a doctrine of belonging at the Village. You belong here and you should be reminded of that, but it’s not that you belong in this particular little community. It’s that you belong to the table. You belong to Jesus. There’s nothing you can do, or can be done to you, that will separate you from the love of God. Nothing. So as we face chaos, lonliness, and fear, my encouragement is for you to imagine yourself as the monk, as chaos and lonliness and fear come flying at you, to stand up, hold your staff, know that you’re blind, and begin to say: “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life”. And when you hear “eternal life” I want you to hear, “God has given us truth. God has given us justice. God has given us belonging. And this truth, this justice, this belonging, is in Jesus.” And I want you to repeat that mantra. Because no matter how hard you work as good Americans to avoid any kind of adversity and surround your life, as much as you possibly can, without any chaos, without any lonliness and fear, you will face it. It will come knock on your door. And it will meet you every day, and it seeps into your pores. And the only way that you and I can stand against it is to stand with Jesus. To stand in life. So my invitation is simply to take that verse as your mantra this year, and to remember, “That this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son, and whoever has the Son has life, and whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

Being Sent

In Mark 16:14 we find our selves smack dab in the middle of the Great commission. Jesus has appeared to a few people, but as a collective the disciples are doubtful of his Resurrection. In verse 14, Jesus appears to the eleven

14Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. 15And he said to them, "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover."

19So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. 20And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.]] –Mark 16.14 -20

In verse 15 Jesus says Go – when someone says go they are sending you somewhere. Jesus is sending his disciples out, but he is not just sending them, he is also sending us. This go statement is obviously in the context of the Great Commission. He is not just sending the eleven disciples, and then when they die no one has to go anymore. He is sending the Church. And, so God himself is a missionary God. God sends the Church. Now, if you look at John 20.21, Jesus indicates to his disciples that God sent him and now he is sending them. So God sends Jesus into the world to redeem. God and Jesus send the Holy Spirit to help us continue the redeeming process that Christ began. And the Trinity sends us into the world to be missionaries. So Jesus sending us is not just Him sending us, but it really is the Trinity sending us into the world. One of the mistakes the church makes in western culture is to believe that mission is an activity of the church and not it’s “mission” or identity of the church. So we as the western church see ourselves sending people to a foreign land, but we do think of ourselves as being in a foreign land. We don’t see ourselves as missionaries in a foreign land.
So, where are we supposed to go? Jesus says that we are to go into the entire world. The place that the church is sent is into the world. The other problem with the western church is that we have created two cultures – a Christian Culture and a secular culture. We have Christian music, Christian fiction, Christian schools, etc. They are setup against the Secular culture.
 

We are sent into the world. What are we supposed to do when we are sent into the world? We are supposed to preach the Gospel. The Greek word for gospel is evangelon. It means victories. Literally, the Gospel is the Victories of Jesus. This is what we are to preach. What has happen to the Gospel in the Church today? I think the church has claimed it as its own. We possess it. It is ours. The church defines how it is preached and how it is communicated. But that is wrong. The church should be possessed by the Gospel. The church belongs to the Gospel, not the other way around. The Gospel defines what the church looks like. When we talk about the Gospel it seems abstract. What does it mean? Does the Gospel just mean that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and rose on the third day defeating death, or is there something more? Yes, that is it, but there is more. It is the story of the Old and New Testaments. This is the Gospel fleshed out. (more on the Gospel later.)

So, who are we to tell this gospel to? Jesus, in Mark, says that we are to tell it to all creation, which means that it, goes out not just to people, but also to creation. Jesus seems to be saying that the Gospel is not just about you and me, it is the story of redemption, but that story also includes the redemption of creation.

I think the question the Church in America needs to ask – is why does the Gospel seem powerless in our churches? Why is it not our identity? Romans 1:16 tells us that the Gospel has explosive power for salvation of all people.

I think we have watered the gospel down. Think for a moment about what 1 Corinthians 2.1-5 says:
1And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
We as a church look at the gospel through eyes of human wisdom. If you have come to Christ later in life, then you know how silly the Gospel sounds. It’s strange. Think about it. This God, who you have never seen, created this world. And, then humans brought sin into the world, and God had to send his son to save the world from death. His son, it turns out, God incarnate – is a backwater hick from Galilee who never travels farther that 30 miles from his town. He never writes any books. He dies on a Roman cross as a failed Messiah, and then his crazy disciples say that he rose 3 days later and if we believe we will be saved. It’s foolish.

The church, especially the modern one, has tried to rationalize the gospel and turn it into a set of propositions that lead to the ultimate truth. It seems not to have impact on the church. The gospel as truth statements seems not to change people’s lives. I think if the church wants to understand its mission and the identity of the Gospel it needs to look to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5

16From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Paul is simply saying that since we are in Christ we no longer see him through the eyes of worldly wisdom, but through our identity in him. He goes on to say that because we are in Christ, we are new creations. The old is gone and is going and the new has come and is coming. Being in Christ means that you and I are Justified before God, but we are in the process at the same time. (more thoughts later). There is an assumption that to be a new creation, you have to be in Christ. The Gospel then begins with a living encounter with Christ. Why did the disciples run away and deny Christ during the Crucifixion. They had to face the cross. They had to make a decision - would they believe that this dying messiah was the future King of Israel and of the world. The Gospel then begins with a decision to embrace a wounded servant King, or the raw brutal power of Satan. If we embrace Christ, the process of living in our new creation and walking away from the old begins.

18All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;

So once you are in Christ you have a job. What’s happened? You have been reconciled to God and now you have a ministry. And this word in the Greek for ministry is where we get deacon from. But, we all hold the office of deacon. We are all ministers of the Gospel . . . of reconciliation. So, when Christ says go preach the Gospel to creation. We are to reconcile man and creation to God. We are sent to call both man and creation back to God.
19that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

So God reconciled the world to himself through Christ, and now you and I are given the message of reconciliation. The logos of reconciliation. The church is given the message of Jesus. The Gospel.

20Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Corinthians 5.16-21

What do ambassadors do? They don’t have a lot of power. They don’t very often get to step into a country wield a whole bunch power. No, they are trying to establish a friendship with a particular country. Improve communication and cultural understanding.
The way our ministry plays out in the world happens in the context of being ambassadors to the world. That is the Gospel. That is what God sends us to do. The church gets to offer the world an encounter with Christ and an opportunity to be reconciled to God.

What happens when you go into the world? If you look at John 17 you get a little clue as to what Jesus thought would happen. He prays that we would have his Joy. Missionary work is hard and you don’t often see great results right away. Jesus knows this and prays that his joy would be ours. Jesus also asks that we would not be taken out of the world or protected from it, but that we would be protected from Satan. Because when the church decides that it is a mission and that the ministry of reconciliation is their identity, then Satan attacks. You are invading his territory. You are reclaiming what was never his in the first place, and this does not make him happy.

How the Song "Trinity" was written

The below article from NT Wright inspired me to write the now "Village infamous Song: Trinity."

Epilogue

The Prayer of the Trinity

(Originally published in New Tasks for a Renewed Church, 1992, London: Hodder.  Also published as Bringing the Church to the World, 1992, Bethany House, U.S.A., 209-15.  Reproduced by permission of the author.)

by Tom Wright

Trinity Sunday

Isaiah 6:1-8; Ephesians 1:3-14; John 14:8-17

I suggested in chapter 13 that there might be different sorts of prayer that could be explored by those seeking appropriate paths of spirituality within the modern world.  In each of the three lectionary readings for Trinity Sunday, the revelation of the threeness of God comes in the context of prayer and worship.  If we are truly speaking of the true God, then the truest form of that speech can never be abstract discussion about God.  It must be speech addressed to God.  It must be worship.  It must be prayer.

I want, in this brief epilogue, to suggest one form of prayer in particular that seems to me to encapsulate all that I have been trying to say.  It grows out of several concerns and backgrounds, and I believe it may be helpful to some who are wrestling with these issues and seeking to do so in a Christian way, that is, not by mere intellectual effort alone, but through prayer, meditation, and a settled and steady seeking of God’s will and way.  I am aware that prayer and temperament are intertwined, and there may well be some who, for perfectly good reasons, will find my suggestions incomprehensible or unnecessary.  I trust that they will excuse this short chapter, and leave it for those who may find something in it to their profit.

Continue reading here

The Village Song Trinity:

The Myth of Endless Energy

To all those type "A" people.  To the ones who get a lot more done than the rest of us.  To all wide-eyed hopeful people of industry.  I tip my glass, and then I take a nap.  Sleepy.

I wonder often . . . Were we all so anxious 100 years ago?  I wonder often . . . How do I rise and build?  How do I bend my back and lean into all that I've been called to?  How do I work with purpose?  How does one build the kingdom?

Fight.  Fight for my wife, kids, and church.  The Enemy plots against us.  He despises God, but we must stand our ground.  The horn must be blown.  The Enemy is on our door step.  The Father - our God - is our shield and spear.  We fight for our families with the weapons of our God.  Oh God, be our shield and spear.

Jesus help us make it through the night.  At the cross we sit.  Hopeful for your return.  Hopeful for your relief.  God is our refuge.  Fear is as high as mountains, but a river flows to our mouths.  Stillness is all I have.  The Spirit of God stands with me.  The weight of life is relieved in the city.  The strength of God is under my right and left arm.  The Kingdom will not fall.  The Stream.  It makes me Glad.  It will not fall.

Our hearts must meet God.  No more hiding.  A full accounting of our secret idols must be proclaim.  But God's words are often met with resistance and emptiness.  Show us the ancient ways.  Meet us at the cross roads.  At the cross roads our walls fall and the good way is revealed.  Look, Ask, and Walk . .  for you will find rest for your soul.

I Failed

I'm sitting in my living room, and I have this inescapable feeling of failure. My sin, my weakness, my selfishness, my shortsightedness has flooded my space with beams of darkness. The dreams that I once dreamed seem careless and poorly constructed. How long Jesus before you return. How long before failure has no impact. It is not my enemies that I am afraid of, its my friends. I dropped my sword. I let my horse run free. I didn't speak when I should have. I didn't risk. Jesus, I need your help. My friends need your help. My church needs your help. We . . . I can't do this without guidance. Father God, you are mighty. You created the earth in all of its beauty. Thank you for my wife. Thank you for my kids. Thank you for my housemates. You placed me in Tucson. You have guided my steps and redeemed my mistakes. Please, heal me. Please, restore the brokenness in my church. Mend the neglected relationships and strengthen the families that are being stretched to the breaking point. Father, restore the dream. Jesus, I'm a sinner. I've kept my mouth shut when I should have said something. I am afraid. I want people to like me. I hate conflict, and I'm self-defensive. Jesus. I want to follow you. Show me what you are doing in my life, in my family, in my friendships, and in my church. Give me the courage to join you in your mission. Holy Spirit, I'm listening. . .

The Scared Discontent

The scared discontent. I live in the wealthiest country in the world. I have 2 cars, TVs, books, computers, couches, tables, lots of water, lots of food, and a bunch of other stuff. And yet, I'm plagued by discontent and the desire for more. I want to be happy. I want my friends to always say nice things to me and tell me how cool all my ideas are. I want the church I pastor to have the most Godly people - people who never struggle, never have conflict, and always think I'm the best preacher in the world. I want my children to always obey and never ever be a disappointment or reflect badly on me. I want everything to come easy. I don't want to pull the weeds in my garden or fix the pump in my swamp cooler. Come to think of it. I don't want a swamp cooler. I want air conditioning. Really, I want the nagging feeling that something is wrong with me to go away. It sometimes starts to consume me, and then I'm just empty. Everyone has failed me. I've failed me. The anxiety is starting to build.

I am a pastor. I believe in the Gospel. I believe in Jesus - life, death, and resurrection. Once I was foolish, disobedient, confused, and ruled by my proud self. I hated! I lied! BUT - God, in his love, sent Jesus to save me, not because I figured out how not to be obsessed with me, but because of mercy. Through his death on the cross he washed me and brought me to life by the Holy Spirit. I am wealthy in Christ because he generously gave me his Spirit through King Jesus our Savior.

This is good. This is right. I will be careful to devote myself to good. For this is what is profitable.

Jesus help me make it through the night . . . For I am yours.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Sunday July 14, 2013

Good Morning!!

Good morning doughnuts.  Good morning bad coffee.  Good morning tired children.  Good morning sugar-rushed-caffeine high.  Good morning golf.  Good morning Pit. Good morning dancing Elliott and giggly Ashton.  Good morning disappointed-you-bought-the-wrong-doughnut mom.

Good Morning Jesus. 

I'm looking forward to a bunch of giggly kids tonight.  I can't wait to hear the new song I wrote. 

Saturday Mornings - Streaming

Hot and Muggy.  Sun go away.  Clouds come and make Tucson overcast and grey.  Lost on most - the motivational winds that carry us through minor accomplishment.  The sounds of the buzzy bugs is just down right bothersome.  Sleepy children dreaming of August 1st - the dreaded back-to-school day - when their little bodies must rise like zombies to have their brains filled with numbers, letters, and bullies.

Church - people - struggle - music - life.  The contemplation of meaning grabs a hold of tired souls.  We all run.  We all slide.  We all fall down.  Who will lift us?  Will we let Him, or should the stiff arm of stubborn silliness tickle our ever numbing brain into an evil resistance that owns us.  The responsibility is crushing us.   No . . . don't leave us.  Don't let your fear and the voices control you.  No, the word that Nancy Reagan gave us.  It has power.  Yell it in the demon's direction.  Pronounce it over the chaos that threatens to consume you.  There is no temptation that has seized you . . . God is faithful.

Lists on Monday

1. Loved cooking at the Village yesterday. Nothing like pot roast, potatoes, carrots, onions, green beans, and good bread.
2. The Music rocked last night.
3. Thrift Store Bureaucracy played Poison Tree for the first time.
4. Please show Mike Wise's Song some love: This World Just Breaks My Heart
5. We finished the Gospel Of Mark last Night.
6. Check-out our splash videos and other cool media from the Village.

In The Beginning

I'm not much of a writer. I spend most of my time trying not to write. I have a severe learning disability that makes it difficult for me to construct sentences. But recently, I've decided to just put my thoughts out there - in hopes that I might make sense of things.

For the last 9 years of my life I've been a pastor. My church is located in Tucson, and we go by the name - The Village. Being a pastor is an odd job to have because there isn't an "off button" - especially at the Village. Our community is just that, a community. We spend a lot of time together, and people are in and out of each others homes. Early on this was tiring because my house was the main hub for most activities. But things have changed over the years, and we have seen others open their homes and move into neighborhoods together to minister to their friends.

At present, our community is exploring the Gospel as a way of life. With help from people like Tim Keller, churches like Marshill and Soma, and books by Larry Crabb - we wrote a bible study that explores what we call the Three aspects of the Gospel: Story, Identity, Kingdom. Jesus' story being his birth, death, resurrection, and ascension. The Identity being what is given to us as a result of the story, and the Kingdom part is our response to the Story and the Identity given to us - see Romans 12:1.